Our handheld cleaner was broken, so we bought Dyson‘s DC34 Animal Exclusive (£179.99). Dyson is a British technology company, founded in 1992 by industrial designer Sir James Dyson. The company designs and manufactures vacuum cleaners, hand driers, fans and heaters. Dyson became famous for its first dual cyclone vacuum cleaner DC001 which doesn’t need a bag, but also is known for its futuristic design, unlike other home electronics. You may know already, but recently bladeless fans & heaters got attention with its unique design.

I am not really fancy Dyson’s robot-like design which look too masculine. But M was succeeded to persuade me with DC34’s strong suction power. I guess this model is very popular, and it was not on stock at Dyson oneline store, so M registered with “notify me” to let him know when it is back on stock. Waiting for few weeks and finally we got it (as of today, it is not on stock again), but Motorhead Assembly was missing from the box! Few more days of patience, and now it is ready to use.

We got free extendable hose, soft dusting brush, wall mounting bracket and Dyson bag (worth £60) with promotion – great incentive. The cleaner is lighter than it looks (1.53kg), and the handle is easy to hold. It is cordless and doesn’t need a bag, so very convenient as well. The suction noise is high in tone, but not annoyingly too noisy. This handheld cleaner looks more like a gun in Sci-Fi movie, and M is so happy cleaning everywhere, like a kid with a toy gun!

ダイソンから届いた品々。右4品がおまけ / What we received from Dyson, including four freebies (right in the photo)

箱に入っていなかったモーターヘッド。でも迅速に対応・発送してくれた / Motorhead assembly was missing from the box, but was despatched swiftly

Range Rover has collaborated with four Parisian artists to celebrate the new compact city car, which debuted at Paris Motor Show 2010. Each artist was briefed to create art installations based on the wire frame of the Evoque, and these designs were created around the four key attributes of the car; sustainability, luxury, design and technology. One of the participated artists, fashion designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac made an installation based on the theme “luxury” (here for photos).

It’s only 10 days to go til Christmas, and we reluctantly started to write Christmas cards at last. This year, we bought two original V&A sets of cards; “Winter Trees” and “London Design Festival” (£7.50 each).

‘Winter Trees’ (right in the photo) contains 12 cards, 6 each in two designs: Papercut by 18-century English textile designer Anna Maria Garthwaite and ‘Louisiana (1955)’ wallpaper by Dutch-American sculptor Shinkichi Tajiri. Its classic designs with calm and serene colors are perfect for elder family and relatives.

“London Design Festival” on contrary is with four vivid and vibrant designs and simple tricolor of red, white and black. This pack of 12 cards (3 each) is the result of a competition organised by the V&A and London Design Festival. We used them for friends. Design titles and designers are as follows (clockwise from top left).

UK’s large pharmacy chain Boots‘ own product, No 7 Protect & Perfect Beauty Serum. Stocks of the cream immediately sold out and since then 50,000 women have signed up to waiting lists, after the broadcast of BBC’s science documentary series Horizon in 2005, featuring a study which revealed it could make the skin look younger. In 2007, a richer version Protect & Perfect Intense Beauty Serum went on sale. This moisturiser is said to stimulate the production of fibrillin-1, a protein that promotes elasticity in the skin which is lost with sun damage, and reduce wrinkles (BBC news).

The cream costs reasonably £20.50 (30ml), in compare to the equivalent product from luxury beauty brands. So I recommended my mother to use it. She believes that it has improved her skin (she is an outdoor type and has quite a lot of wrinkles from sunburn), and has been using it for few years now. She asked me to buy more yesterday, and I got free gift with spending of £22 or more (Boots.com says over £20) on selected No 7 products. This promotional small black cosmetic bag contains 7 mini-size No 7 products: Intense Beauty Serum, hand cream, day cream, lip gloss, mascara, eye pencil and eye shadow – perfect size for travel, and I will keep it (without telling my mom).

Recently I recognized that our favorite supermarket, Waitrose‘s Organic milk range has been replaced from “Waitrose Organic Fresh Milk” to “Duchy Originals from Waitrose”. I searched Wikipedia and found out that Duchy Originals had agreed an exclusive deal with Waitrose, for Waitrose to originate, manufacture, distribute and sell Duchy products, and this came into effect from this August. The products were relaunched under the new name “Duchy Originals from Waitrose” (formerly Duchy Originals), and the product range will be expand to around 500 from the previous range of around 200.

Duchy Originals is a brand of organic food and was originally set up in 1990 by Charles, Prince of Wales, who has been an advocator of organic food and environmental issues, and named after the Duchy of Cornwall estates that are held in trust by the Prince of Wales (Duchy means the territory of a duke or duchess). The products, including biscuits & snacks, preserves, meat, poultry & fish, desserts, bottled waters, soups and condiments & dressings, as well as hair & body care, are sold mainly in Waitrose in UK, but also in Booths supermarkets (I’ve never heard of it though) and small independent food stores. The Prince of Wales continue his involvement with the brand after the company’s deal with Waitrose, and the royalties is donated to charity The Prince’s Charities Foundation as before.

We often buy Duchy Originals products for souvenirs to abroad, as this is Prince Charles’ company and we can talk about it. Our pick for a souvenir is Highland Shortbread Tin. Shortbread is a traditional Scottish biscuit, but also popular in other parts of UK. Duchy Originals’ Highland shortbread is made using wheat and oats from the Duchy’s farm at Highgrove royal estate. The shortbread is in a classic design tin box, decorated with a watercolour, painted by Prince Charles, of the Balmoral estate in Scotland, and you can reuse the tin after you finish the biscuits. The price is quite reasonable at £6.99, but it looks expensive – highly recommended!

I’s been about 2 months since our floor light on the mezzanine broke. We had been using table light temporarily, putting on the top of a book shelf, but it was too dark. We had been looking for a new floor light but we couldn’t find what we really like. But the those dark days are finally over today! Finally, Habitat‘s ‘Coppa‘ (£99), which we saw in the store but it was only display model and was sold out, has come back in stock after many weeks. We ordered on Habitat’s web shop right away, and received it just today.

The dimmerable floor light is in powder coated metal, and 180cm in height. Its vertically symmetrical shape is very cute, and reminds me of a tin can telephone made of paper cups that I used to play with when I was a kid. The base is small and it looks that it may fall quite easily when we accidentally bump into it, but I like it as it doesn’t take too much space.

Today I found this cardboard birdhouse that I bought a while ago at the Victoria and Albert Museum and forgot about, and finally made it. The “Foldable Birdhouse” by New York based Kikkerland is made of water resistant coated cardboard and is easy to put together. It comes with a wooden dowel for the front perch as well. This birdhouse is just simple and ordinary looking, but I bought this for its cute package design. I was searching the information about the product and found out that it cost only $4 on kikkerland online shop in US, while I paid £7 at V&A – it means it cost more than double here. The museum shop probably sell at RRP or even higher, to help funding the museum which is free admission for permanent collection.

The birdhouse is enclosed in the brown envelope and you can post it out, just removing the plastic package. You can make your original birdhouse by painting or putting some stickers on outside, but unfortunately I don’t have an artistic talent and just keep it as it is. I have to buy bird food, but I put popcorn maize for now (too big?!). Looking to see if some birds come to visit their new house :-)